At the X Developers Conference there was a discussion of the issues around framebuffer and DRI. Theodore Ts'o suggested that I write it up and post it for discussion. I'm going to try and list all of the issues I've heard from all sides so some of the proposed solutions are in conflict. The goal of this list is to provide direction for a topic discussion at the Ottawa Kernel Summit.
The top item is that accessing the video hardware is a free for all. There are two device drivers, FB and DRI, plus numerous user space apps, like X and SVGlib, all trying to control the hardware. The result of this is that it is easy to lock up your machine when switching between the different usages. X does particularly nasty things to the hardware from user space without informing the kernel. First is a little background that should have been in my original post: http://thunker.thunk.org/pipermail/ksummit-2004-discuss/2004-May/000399.html Next is the orginal post: http://thunker.thunk.org/pipermail/ksummit-2004-discuss/2004-May/000379.html The reply thread on the kernel summit list is here: http://thunker.thunk.org/pipermail/ksummit-2004-discuss/2004-May/thread.html Some talk about doing a better video memory manager and kgi is here: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=dri-devel&r=1&b=200405&w=2 A major topic that I missed in the original list was how to handle BSD. DRM is under the BSD license and FB is GPL. If these two code bases are merged, what are we going to do about BSD? I don't know the appropriate BSD lists to post this to so please forward as necessary. Another topic that I missed was, why did kgi fail and what can we do to avoid repeating the same path this time around. After the flames from this settle down I'll try to write a document summarizing the conclusions reached, if any. The best possible outcome would be a design document for review at Kernel Summit. ===== Jon Smirl [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by Sleepycat Software Learn developer strategies Cisco, Motorola, Ericsson & Lucent use to deliver higher performing products faster, at low TCO. http://www.sleepycat.com/telcomwpreg.php?From=osdnemail3 -- _______________________________________________ Dri-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel
